U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper on Monday announced $125 million in federal funding for a pilot program designed to conserve water and ultimately help save the Colorado River system.
The Upper Colorado River Commission, as part of a five-point plan submitted to the Bureau of Reclamation last August, wants to restart its system conservation pilot program, which offers compensation to Colorado River users in exchange for voluntary and temporary water conservation measures.
Based on a request for proposal issued by the UCRC, farmers and ranchers could be paid roughly $150 per acre-feet. If that isn't enough, farmers and ranchers can submit an additional request with justification for a higher price point.*
The original pilot program, which ran from 2014 to 2018 under the Upper Colorado River Commission and the reclamation bureau, sought to "explore potential solutions, address declining water levels in Lakes Mead and Lake Powell and the potential for long-term drought in the Upper Colorado River Basin. The program implemented and tested on-the-ground water conservation opportunities," the UCRC said.
Bureau Commissioner Camille Touton told the seven states of the Colorado River basin last June to come up with a plan by August to conserve 2 to 4 million acre-feet of water annually to save water levels at the two reservoirs, along with maintaining hydropower generated by Hoover and Glen Canyon dams.
The federal funding came out of Hickenlooper’s Colorado River Basin Conservation Act, which was included and signed into law in the Fiscal Year 2023 omnibus government funding bill.
This funding, made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act, will enable the Bureau of Reclamation, in partnership with the Upper Colorado River Commission, to immediately move forward to implement the System Conservation Pilot Program, Hickenlooper said in a statement Monday.
“To combat the drought crisis on the Colorado River, we all need to work together. Empowering voluntary conservation is a critical part of managing our diminished water supplies,” Hickenlooper said.
The Upper Colorado River Commission pointed out that the system conservation pilot program is not demand management, which is being reviewed by the UCRC and the upper basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The commission, in proposing a restart of the pilot, did not identify any targets for water conservation.
"It is a voluntary, temporary, and compensated program to put forward additional reductions in 2023, and therefore participation is not known in advance of program initiation," the UCRC said.
Demand management, according to the Colorado Water Conservation Board, is "temporary, voluntary, and compensated reductions in the consumptive use of water in the Upper Colorado River Basin." The approach has been controversial on the Western Slope. A 2020 study said a demand management program could result in a "moderate" scenario savings of 25,000 acre-feet of water per year for five years but with job losses in agriculture.
"About one in every 60 irrigated acres currently in hay or corn production across Western Colorado would be temporarily fallowed by participants under this scenario," the study said.
